By what logic, guitarspider? My main point was that our 7 drops have the potential to win the game. The point about it only being a 3/3 was a counter to the claim that you can staple a cmc's worth of stats onto a cmc's worth of and call it a day. The diminishing returns at such a deep point in the game start kicking in. Besides, a 3/3 vanilla isn't worth 3 mana and an incomplete vindicate isn't worth 4 mana.
The ceiling on a card is one thing, but I'm looking at its average case scenario. Paying almost double for what will commonly be a nekretaal/ftk is not a good rate. Yes, sometimes you'll get it to naturalize something at sorcery speed instead, but I still don't like paying that much extra mana for flexibility.
Trostanis summoner is a really bad comparison. Yes it is multicolor vs artifact, but that trade-off can't possibly be worth it when (after you subtract the 3/3s) you're looking at an oblivion ring's worth of value vs what is probably a very cubable, 5 and change mana's worth of upgraded bestial menace.
(Also, "two bodies that don't matter" is oversimplying how multiple bodies are much better than their individual parts.)
/
Rancoredmalone, I can't think of a cubed 7 drop, much less 6 drop, that has as little combat relevance as this. The closest I can think of is angler drake. The difference between unsummon and vindicate is, I think, just a little smaller than the difference between a 3/3 on the ground and a 4/4 flier. But angler drake costs less and isn't even in a ton of lists, as far as I know.
However, to your first point, yes, you dont want to overpay for your answers. Answers are almost always more narrow than effective questions. Even if this hits something like charging monstrasaur, and you've broken even on mana, you're always paying something of a tempo premium in terms of time and the risk of not having something so juicy to kill.
lol jeez, I just started typing up a defense of the Golem that included me saying yeah well in your turbo green decks he's at least hitting a land then I remember that the freaking METEOR THAT'S CRASHING INTO THE GROUND can't actually destroy a land so
1) I think the 3/3 body is reasonably relevant in combat, especially given that (likely) the best creature on the opponent's board was destroyed when the Golem hit the battlefield. Also, I would agree that Opportunity is the other least "impacting the board" 6+ drop people typically play.
2) In regards to the "adding CMCs together" method of card evaluation, I think a good part of the evaluation of these cards kind of includes the fact that these two cards are stapled together on a single card*. For something like Angler Drake, no one plays Air Elemental at 5 mana and no one plays Unsummon at 1 mana. The fact that they are tied together matters most. Even then, I will admit the absolute tippy-top CUbe cards either provide their combination at a low mana cost or with a strong return on investment.
No one would run Onakke Ogre for 3 mana, but add a 1-mana Flame Slash and you get a staple in Flametongue Kavu.
And I do imagine most people would be fine paying 4 mana for a 5/5 token AND also would be fine paying 2 mana to gain 10 life, hence playing Feudkiller's Verdict.
By this measure, I think Meteor Golem barely gets by for larger CUbes, as a colorless 3/3 for 3 is below average and a 4-mana pseudo Vindicate is average, but then you get them bundled into one.
3) Given how expensive they are to cast, what does a card have to do to be worth CUbing if it costs 6+ mana? Does it have to impact the board some AND have great stats? Can it just impact the board a bunch? Can it just be a stats monster? I will also post this in the general Peasant discussion thread because I am interested to hear feedback.
[*Note: There's a moment in the film "Thank You For Smoking" where Rob Lowe's movie executive character explains to the tobacco marketer how it would be $10 million to get Brad Pitt to smoke in their movie, $10 million to get Catherine Zita-Jones to smoke in their movie, but $25 million to get them to both smoke together. When asked why it would cost even more for both of them to smoke together in the movie, Rob Lowe replies "Synergy."]
Flavor fail aside, I'm sure that Meteor Golem would make cube decks.
Aside from the occasional Arbor Elf/Utopia Sprawl-fueled T3 7-drop, missing lands isn't a huge deal.
Dark Hatchling and Phyrexian Ingester go into a good number of my cube's decks. Golem obviously lacks flying and can't embiggen like the Ingester, but +points for being colorless and the times when you want to Naturalize something instead of Murder it.
The play styles are obviously different, but I'd expect Golem to be about as "winning" as most of our Peasant-legal Eldrazi (Bane of Bala Ged and friends).
Yeah, I think Meteor Golem is mostly fine. Colourless enchantment removal is pretty good, and it could be another piece for the 'big red' deck with Hoarding Dragon and a bunch of manarocks. Also, Simic decks can find a use for it, because those tend to be lacking in the removal department.
Question to those who might have some more experience with this than me (I have done maybe five M19 drafts), did we all sleep on Dryad Greenseeker? I have heard it is a top-notch uncommon in the vanilla draft format and this makes some sense. It would not be a great topdeck, but has a lot of potential as a card draw engine over the course of a long game.
Is there any chance it is as good as something like Wall of Blossoms? The 1/3 attacking body is probably better than an 0/4 defender, and it would take roughly 2.5 turns of tapping Greenseeker to draw a card, but there is potential for more card draw over those additional turns.
I was initially interested in Greenseeker, until someone pointed out that it compares poorly with Borderland Ranger and Sylvan Ranger, since both of those draw you the land immediately and can also let you fix your mana and/or help you splash.
But then I started to think about it as a Sigiled Starfish. It is definitely an oversimplification to see seeker as a starfish that scries lands into your hand rather than to the bottom of your library, but I’m still more interested now.
It will really help you draw gas in the late game while still letting you hit land drops for mana sinks.
So, after playing against Dryad Greenseeker some more, I decided to give it a shot in my CUbe. I ask the collective forum which card you would drop from my CUbe:
If forced to, I suppose it'd be terrain elemental. Base stat Longtusk tangles with almost as many 1, 2 and 3 drops, and then suddenly it's better by a huge margin.
I also would recommend looking over your whole green section to see if there's anything a step below everything else. All of these cards are pretty good.
It is funny you mention that, Leelue, because I eventually took out Adventurous Impulse instead, after finally playing with it in a deck and whiffing once. I had originally thought of Adventurous Impulse as a green Ponder, but Ponder never strictly whiffs, and has a lot of extra synergies with either the Spells Matters cards or the graveyard based decks that blue often works with.
[...]I eventually took out Adventurous Impulse instead, after finally playing with it in a deck and whiffing once[...]
Anecdotal evidence ftw? If your average green deck has 17 lands and 15 creatures then Impulse will whiff in 1 out of 261 games.
Fair enough on your analysis there of the actual chance of missing in those circumstances. I think my deck ended up being around 30 total hits, which is still extremely unlikely to miss. So, it is pretty anecdotal on my part.
Let me rephrase my analysis: the fact that the card misses non-creature spells means there are enough instances in which you are not getting the best card out of the top three. Having 32 total hits means that about 46% of the time you are not able to select every single one of the 3 cards you see. Combining that fact with the fact that my green does not have any real synergies with Adventurous Impulse hitting the graveyard meant I felt fine cutting it.
I love this. "Oh yeah, mr. Card? You whiff on me, do you? Well you can go sit in the binder and think about what you've done. So there! Showed you who's boss, didn't I?"
To expand on that math, here are the chances of hitting either 0, 1, 2, or 3 cards depending on the number of land/creatures you have. I think part of my issue, for the deck I played it in, was that I was never able to hit removal with Adventurous Impulse. A lot of that is deck specific, to be sure.
At the 32 hit level, when you are unable to select one of the cards 46% of the time, this means you could missing the best card 15-20% of the time. That is not particularly bad, but I think a lot of that hurts the value of it.
I think Ponder and its ilk are certainly better than Adventurous Impulse, although probably not by that much. Like I said before, it certainly does not hurt that between Blue and Dimir and Izzet, Ponder has upside either in a "Spells Matter" deck or a deck which wants to fill the graveyard for Delve or similar interactions.
The ceiling on a card is one thing, but I'm looking at its average case scenario. Paying almost double for what will commonly be a nekretaal/ftk is not a good rate. Yes, sometimes you'll get it to naturalize something at sorcery speed instead, but I still don't like paying that much extra mana for flexibility.
Trostanis summoner is a really bad comparison. Yes it is multicolor vs artifact, but that trade-off can't possibly be worth it when (after you subtract the 3/3s) you're looking at an oblivion ring's worth of value vs what is probably a very cubable, 5 and change mana's worth of upgraded bestial menace.
(Also, "two bodies that don't matter" is oversimplying how multiple bodies are much better than their individual parts.)
/
Rancoredmalone, I can't think of a cubed 7 drop, much less 6 drop, that has as little combat relevance as this. The closest I can think of is angler drake. The difference between unsummon and vindicate is, I think, just a little smaller than the difference between a 3/3 on the ground and a 4/4 flier. But angler drake costs less and isn't even in a ton of lists, as far as I know.
However, to your first point, yes, you dont want to overpay for your answers. Answers are almost always more narrow than effective questions. Even if this hits something like charging monstrasaur, and you've broken even on mana, you're always paying something of a tempo premium in terms of time and the risk of not having something so juicy to kill.
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
430, Peasant, Very Unpowered
Why you should take your hybrids out of your gold section
Manamath Article
unplayable trash it is
1) I think the 3/3 body is reasonably relevant in combat, especially given that (likely) the best creature on the opponent's board was destroyed when the Golem hit the battlefield. Also, I would agree that Opportunity is the other least "impacting the board" 6+ drop people typically play.
2) In regards to the "adding CMCs together" method of card evaluation, I think a good part of the evaluation of these cards kind of includes the fact that these two cards are stapled together on a single card*. For something like Angler Drake, no one plays Air Elemental at 5 mana and no one plays Unsummon at 1 mana. The fact that they are tied together matters most. Even then, I will admit the absolute tippy-top CUbe cards either provide their combination at a low mana cost or with a strong return on investment.
No one would run Onakke Ogre for 3 mana, but add a 1-mana Flame Slash and you get a staple in Flametongue Kavu.
And I do imagine most people would be fine paying 4 mana for a 5/5 token AND also would be fine paying 2 mana to gain 10 life, hence playing Feudkiller's Verdict.
By this measure, I think Meteor Golem barely gets by for larger CUbes, as a colorless 3/3 for 3 is below average and a 4-mana pseudo Vindicate is average, but then you get them bundled into one.
3) Given how expensive they are to cast, what does a card have to do to be worth CUbing if it costs 6+ mana? Does it have to impact the board some AND have great stats? Can it just impact the board a bunch? Can it just be a stats monster? I will also post this in the general Peasant discussion thread because I am interested to hear feedback.
[*Note: There's a moment in the film "Thank You For Smoking" where Rob Lowe's movie executive character explains to the tobacco marketer how it would be $10 million to get Brad Pitt to smoke in their movie, $10 million to get Catherine Zita-Jones to smoke in their movie, but $25 million to get them to both smoke together. When asked why it would cost even more for both of them to smoke together in the movie, Rob Lowe replies "Synergy."]
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/peasantsnowcube
-- Updated with Outlaws of Thunder Junction
The PioneWer Peasant CUbe
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/pionewer
-- Updated with Murders at Karlov Manor
Aside from the occasional Arbor Elf/Utopia Sprawl-fueled T3 7-drop, missing lands isn't a huge deal.
Dark Hatchling and Phyrexian Ingester go into a good number of my cube's decks. Golem obviously lacks flying and can't embiggen like the Ingester, but +points for being colorless and the times when you want to Naturalize something instead of Murder it.
The play styles are obviously different, but I'd expect Golem to be about as "winning" as most of our Peasant-legal Eldrazi (Bane of Bala Ged and friends).
WiJ
Peasant 540 Cube
Is there any chance it is as good as something like Wall of Blossoms? The 1/3 attacking body is probably better than an 0/4 defender, and it would take roughly 2.5 turns of tapping Greenseeker to draw a card, but there is potential for more card draw over those additional turns.
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/peasantsnowcube
-- Updated with Outlaws of Thunder Junction
The PioneWer Peasant CUbe
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/pionewer
-- Updated with Murders at Karlov Manor
It's a 1/3 for 2 with "T: draw a relevant card half the time in the early and midgame" That's worth a look.
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
430, Peasant, Very Unpowered
Why you should take your hybrids out of your gold section
Manamath Article
Cubetutor Peasant'ish-Funbox
Project: Khans of Tarkir Cube (cubetutor)
My C/Ube on Cube Cobra
Merfolk Branchwalker vs Terrain Elemental vs Longtusk Cub vs Noose Constrictor
There has not been any consensus among my CUbe group, and I am personally leaning towards removing Longtusk Cub.
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/peasantsnowcube
-- Updated with Outlaws of Thunder Junction
The PioneWer Peasant CUbe
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/pionewer
-- Updated with Murders at Karlov Manor
But whichever of those I chose, I'd also make a note that I am swapping aggressive two-drop for a durdly one.
Cubetutor Peasant'ish-Funbox
Project: Khans of Tarkir Cube (cubetutor)
I'd lean towards removing Terrain since I dislike pure vanilla creatures.
I also would recommend looking over your whole green section to see if there's anything a step below everything else. All of these cards are pretty good.
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
430, Peasant, Very Unpowered
Why you should take your hybrids out of your gold section
Manamath Article
Also, I did get to play Dryad Greenseeker alongside a Sylvan Library, which felt like a very good combo indeed.
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/peasantsnowcube
-- Updated with Outlaws of Thunder Junction
The PioneWer Peasant CUbe
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/pionewer
-- Updated with Murders at Karlov Manor
Fair enough on your analysis there of the actual chance of missing in those circumstances. I think my deck ended up being around 30 total hits, which is still extremely unlikely to miss. So, it is pretty anecdotal on my part.
Let me rephrase my analysis: the fact that the card misses non-creature spells means there are enough instances in which you are not getting the best card out of the top three. Having 32 total hits means that about 46% of the time you are not able to select every single one of the 3 cards you see. Combining that fact with the fact that my green does not have any real synergies with Adventurous Impulse hitting the graveyard meant I felt fine cutting it.
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/peasantsnowcube
-- Updated with Outlaws of Thunder Junction
The PioneWer Peasant CUbe
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/pionewer
-- Updated with Murders at Karlov Manor
Also I really want to know how well the 1/3 occasional draw engine goes
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
430, Peasant, Very Unpowered
Why you should take your hybrids out of your gold section
Manamath Article
--
Cubetutor Peasant'ish-Funbox
Project: Khans of Tarkir Cube (cubetutor)
At the 32 hit level, when you are unable to select one of the cards 46% of the time, this means you could missing the best card 15-20% of the time. That is not particularly bad, but I think a lot of that hurts the value of it.
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/peasantsnowcube
-- Updated with Outlaws of Thunder Junction
The PioneWer Peasant CUbe
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/pionewer
-- Updated with Murders at Karlov Manor
Cubetutor Peasant'ish-Funbox
Project: Khans of Tarkir Cube (cubetutor)
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/peasantsnowcube
-- Updated with Outlaws of Thunder Junction
The PioneWer Peasant CUbe
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/pionewer
-- Updated with Murders at Karlov Manor
Also the 1/3 Sindbad.
Cubetutor Peasant'ish-Funbox
Project: Khans of Tarkir Cube (cubetutor)